Page 22 of Broken Vow

“I’m so sorry this happened to you, little one. I hope old Briar didn’t scare you too much. She can be a bit of a grouch sometimes.” He petted the dog’s head, and her tail began to wag, and she looked lovingly up at her master. I felt myself relax further.

I had no way to tell him who I was. I sat in the cut stalks with my freed leg throbbing and the pendant in my teeth and looked at him, and let him see whatever he could see, because it felt to me that he was the first living thing since my transformation to look at me and understand that I was more than I appeared.

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he looked back over his shoulder, toward the road, toward the dark shape of the capital somewhere beyond the night, and I watched him weigh something.

“Where did you come from, little one,” he said softly. It was not a question he expected me to answer. He brought his hand forward, a gesture meant to let me sniff it. To my surprise my body followed its instinct, and I reached out my cold nose and breathed in the scent of this stranger who had shown me kindness. A hint of oaky soap and warm skin settled into me and filled my head with warmth, and my whimpering stopped. He leaned forward to get a better look at my leg. “That looks like it hurts, little one. You should rest, and somebody should look at this.”

His jaw set. His hand, resting on his knee, closed and opened. He was a man deciding to do a thing he should not do.

“I cannot leave you here,” he said. “You are hurt and you can’t walk on that.” He shook his head, slowly, at himself, as though arguing with someone who was not there. “All right. If you don’t tell, I won’t tell either. You have to promise me to stay quiet, and in return I will treat your wound. I will take you with me, and as soon as you feel better, I promise to let you go. Is that agreeable, little one?” The fox body looked up at him the way Briar had looked up at him, and I knew in that moment that the ancient wisdom my new body carried, about how to weigh risk and where to place trust in a hostile world, had decided that I would be safe with him.

He reached for the clasp of his cloak.

“I will not leave you in a field to be skinned.”

He wrapped me in the cloak.

He did it gently, gathering me up with the wire-cut leg held clear, folding the heavy cloth around me until only my head was free, the pendant still in my teeth, and he held me against his chest as he stood and carried me to the horse. I could feel his chest heave, feel the warmth of his body radiating outward, and I had no urge to fight him or run. I should have been afraid, a creature my size in the arms of a man I did not know, but the steady beat of his heart against the cloak and the low murmur of his voice eased the fear, and I lay against him and let myself be carried.

He mounted with me held against him in one arm, the reins in the other, and turned the horse back toward the road and toward the dark line of the capital beyond, his dog walking alongside, eyeing the hurt bundle of fox in his master’s arms with a concerned look.

We rode through the night, and I drifted against his chest. The wound at my leg throbbed in the same beat of my heart as the cut at the corner of my mouth, but the cold of the night could not reach me through the cloak and the warmth of his body, and somewhere in the long ride I slept, the first real sleep since the cottage, my animal self having decided, against all instinct, to trust the man who carried her.

* * *

When I woke we were at a set of imposing walls. I felt the horse slow, and I came up out of the sleep and freed my muzzle from the warm nest he had made for my body, his scent still lingering in my nose. The capital rose around us in the last of the night, the white-tiled walls catching the first grey of the coming dawn, the gates ahead, the pagoda roofs of the inner complex rising beyond. I had reached it. I could not believe my eyes. After the village and the road and the river and the meadow and the snare, after everything, I had reached the capital. The man who had freed me from the trap I was sure would be my demise had carried me to the place I had been trying to reach since the morning I woke as a fox.

He gently put a finger on top of my muzzle and guided it back into the cloth.

“You have to be quiet for a minute, little one. Animals are not allowed in the knight barracks. I’ll have to leave Briar at the kennels, but I will take you to my quarters and attend to your wounds. I have to get you past the guards. It would be unseemly for a knight of the Veilborn to break the rules of the order.”

I settled back into the cloth and breathed shallowly, too afraid to ruin the chance to enter the palace I had longed to reach.

I heard another man speak. Even through the cloth wrapped around me, the smell of stale sweat reached my nose. “Welcome back, Sir Taren. The others returned two bells ago. You are the last. I hope the journey was not too exhausting.”

So Sir Taren was the name of the stranger who had freed me.

“All is well, Master Guard. Though I must admit my bones are aching and my back is longing for a hot bath and something to eat.” The heavy fabric shifted, exposing a fraction of my face. For one terrifying heartbeat my eyes locked onto a weathered guardsman with a stern, watchful look. He saw me. Taren drew the fabric back across my face. The silence stretched, and I could feel the tension in it. “You look tired yourself, Master Guardsman. Why don’t you end your shift early. I’ll see that someone takes over for you. Take a break, and have a cup of heated rice spirit on me at the tavern. Tell the host to put it on my tab.”

My heart beat hard. I knew the guardsman had seen me, and so did Taren, and this was his way to get us both through. But more than that, he had just broken the rules of the palace to bring me in.

The gate opened and we passed through. The horse began to trot, and the fabric shifted again, and from the corner of my sight I saw the master guard wave another man close and tell him something. I did not know what it was, but I could only hope it was nothing about the silver fox this man was smuggling into the palace.

After a short ride we stopped again. I felt Taren reach down, and Briar gave a short friendly bark to say her goodbyes at the kennels, and we went on.

I felt the horse turn and turn again, through courts and under arches, the sounds of the waking palace muffled by the cloak, and at last he dismounted and carried me on foot through a door and down a corridor and into a room that smelled of him, of the fresh scent and the leather and the oaky soap and the faint smoke of a banked fire, and he set me down on something soft.

His chambers.

I learned the shape of them slowly, from the floor, in the grey light before dawn. A bed against one wall. A desk beneath a window. A hearth with its fire burning low. Weapons on a stand in the corner, a sword and a longer blade and a bow. The room of a man who lived simply despite the palace around him, who kept few things and kept them well. He made me a bed of folded cloth beside the hearth, where the warmth would reach me, and he set down a bowl of water, and he disappeared and returned with a plate of grilled meat and vegetables and rice, clearly meant for himself, which he laid beside the water without trying to make me take it. The smell of the meat hit me at once, and I looked up at him in question. He laughed and pushed the plate encouragingly closer.

“Eat up, little one. You need some food in your belly if you want to return to the forest soon.” He looked at the pendant still between my teeth and added, “Or wherever it is you have to be. May I?” He gestured at the pendant. I opened my mouth slowly, and he removed it, and looked at the chain and the catch. “That’s a very inconvenient way to carry this.” With a few skilful moves he made the catch work again, bowed down, and put the chain and pendant around my neck. I was struck by the gentleness of the gesture, and I would have pressed my head into his palm in reflex, if at that moment a familiar scent had not reached my nose.

It was the faint residue of the master guard’s stale sweat, wafting in through the gap beneath the door, and with it a hushed female voice and a muffled thank you. Then that scent faded, and another took its place, the scent of ceremonial incense, the kind I was used to burning at the morning temple rituals. I was distracted from it almost at once, because I could finally see the face of the man named Sir Taren.

He was younger than I had thought from his bearing. Dark hair, bound back, a few strands loose across his brow. A face that was not soft but was not hard either, a face that had seen things and had decided, against what it had seen, to remain gentle. There was something in it I could not name, some quality underneath the kindness, some old sorrow worn so long it had become part of the bones. I did not understand it. I filed it away, the way I had learned to file away the things about this new world I could not yet read.

“Look at you, little one. How well that suits that beautiful coat of yours. I haven’t seen your kind in a long time. I’m glad there are still more of you around.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand why you didn’t work your tail’s magic to slip the snare. You must be sick. Let’s get that wound of yours taken care of and put some food in you to rekindle your magic.”